Rain Lily, Beginning

India · nature

A pink rain lily bud rises through the long grass-like leaves of its own clump, two more buds opening behind it against a warm terracotta wall.

Rain lilies — Zephyranthes — are one of the small miracles of the Indian monsoon. They live underground as small bulbs for ten months of the year, and within a day or two of the first proper rain they push up these slender stalks with a single bud at the top. The whole population in a garden tends to flower at once, so a clump that was just grass yesterday is suddenly a small pink storm.

This was the day before the storm. The first bud had pushed up clear of the leaves, the second was just behind it, and a third was lifting its tip out of the foliage at the bottom of the frame. The wall behind was a faded terracotta, the light coming in low and almost sideways, the colour reading just slightly warmer than the bud itself. I shot from the same height as the flowers so the wall worked as a backdrop instead of as ground. Rain lilies have one of the shortest seasons of any garden flower in India — a few days, then gone. They are also one of the easiest things in the world to miss.

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